One Nation -- Columbus' restaurant in the sky

AMY SANCETTA / DISPATCHDiners at One Nation in 1983. The restaurant was on top of the One Nationwide Plaza tower, and a glass-walled observation elevator (below) carried people non-stop to the top.

ROB RHEES / DISPATCH

One Nation, a restaurant with a panoramic view of the city, was a popular Downtown Columbus destination for many years. It opened in November 1977, occupying the 38th floor of One Nationwide Plaza.

Diners would ride up to the restaurant in a glass-enclosed exterior elevator at the rate of 500 feet a minute. On a clear day, people could see about 15 miles from the elevator's top stop. Riding the elevator and then dining at the top was a great way to celebrate a romantic evening, and a tourist attraction for the city.

"In the One Nation cocktail lounge, for the price of a cup of coffee or something stronger, you can watch the lights come on all over the city as dusk falls," according to a 1983 Dispatch Magazine feature story about interesting vantage points in Columbus.

The Dispatch reported that One Nation had four separate dining rooms, each with a regional American theme: The Heartlands, The Old South, Down East, and The Southwest.

The Dispatch has also reported that it was *not* a revolving restaurant, though many people, for some reason, think it was.

Stouffers, which ran the restaurant when it opened, operated many others at one time under the names of J.B. Winberie, James Tavern, Rusty Scupper and Parkers' Lighthouse, as well as restaurants on top of skyscrapers -- not only in Columbus, but in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Cleveland.

One Nation closed in 1997 after a "failure to come to terms" with the building's owner, Nationwide Insurance Enterprise. (Seven months before it closed, another Downtown restaurant in the sky, Christophers, closed. It had occupied the 31st floor of the Riffe Center at 77 S. High St. for seven years.)